The Ultimate Release

You will not find me subscribing to the belief system that spirituality must be devoid of sensuality, or that to be a holy person, one must be ascetic, renouncing sexuality. Archaic notions, such as in order to reach refined states of consciousness, one must 'transcend' the flesh or be above 'dirty' things like sex, are notions best left to centuries uncivilized. It is the 21st Century, and it is time to transcend ignorant social restrictions that inhibit the circulation of our healthy energy bodies and psyches. I am here to vouch for the experience of the human potential, and the ability to transcend the mundane and experience deeply expanded states of highly refined consciousness within an intensely sexually ecstatic experience. And I am here to vouch for the opportunity that sexuality offers every one of us, the offer of mastering our life force energy, mastering our energy body, mastering our meditative consciousness, surrendering into the thousand petalled blossoming flower of our open heart, thus mastering our potential for the deepest bliss imaginable.My personal theory as to why sexuality has become such an amazingly imbalanced aspect of our culture boils down to suppression, based in the history of power & control of hierarchical structures rampant in Western Culture. Our culturally rampant sexual imbalances have exploded its themes into our personal lives in such diverse ways as pornography, violence & warfare, sexually disconnected marriages, maintaining clean exteriors of ideal marriage whilst having affairs & escorts, women who feel sexually disconnected from their sensual bodies, the impropriety of public nudity, shame of ones body and sexual energy, prostitution, rape, child abuse, discrimination of non-heteronormative people, and most importantly ~ the cultural obsession with putting images of ridiculously sexy and glamourously tantalizing women on every magazine page, street corner, web site and bus stop.The ideal is to live in a culture where none of these issues are common or even exist, where people don't act out their repressed sexuality by victimizing innocent youth, where people don't necessarily need to go a erotic practitioner or where people aren't judged when they do, where partners aren't confused and sneaking around each other to release their pent up sexual energy; a culture where people are unanimously honored for embodying their own individual expression of their creative selves and their healthy bodies. These would be ideals, but we got to work with what we got. Yet it offers a template for the direction one might want to go towards if one wanted to create a new paradigm of balance. And I believe that one of the most important things any one of us can offer our culture at large is our self-transformation, our vision of our full potential, and our process of doing the work necessary to embody our healthy, liberated, peacefully joyfully radiantly balanced selves.When we understand that our sexual energy is an aspect within the core, creative energy of our bodies and the existence of our being, we realize it is interwoven within the essence of our life force energy. It is the spark that animates our presence being alive; we are born of sex ~ it is a supernatural action gifting the creation of life. Then it becomes apparent that by blocking or suppressing our sexuality, we are suppressing the very essence of our bio-energetic reality within our psyche and body. And that if we express our sexuality, we are expressing and liberating our bio-energetic makeup, we allow the free-flow of our energy body and this is the energy that gives us life and maintains our body-mind vitality.The cornerstone of Buddhist thought is based on liberation from suffering, liberation from ego, and transcendence of duality, using meditation as the primary tool with which to achieve these lofty goals that most feel unable to attain. The attainment of an enlightenment experience has been equated with saintliness equivalent with Jesus or the Buddha, reaching transcendence that for most is seemingly an impossible mountain to climb, and so we put on pedestals and worship those that have. And many have said that Tantra is the fastest route to enlightenment, because it forces an acceleration of high energies through the human nervous system through peaks of orgasmic energy. Tantra is about the union of dualities, merging yin and yang, masculine and feminine, heaven and earth, divine intelligence and mundane existence. When we merge together through a wide open heart, it forces us to surrender completely into ecstasy, forcing us to examine all the aspects of our consciousness that are afraid to be open, holding back in the suppression of full throttle energy release. This requires practice with the most fundamental Buddhist tools of mindfulness and awareness in order to master ecstatic surrender release.The reason that the modern Western adaptation of Tantra is so crucial to western culture at this time is that, by and large as a Western society, we have been unanimously caged in restricted modes of conduct that do not allow us to reach our full potential and don't teach us the value of our full ecstatic human potential. We are a culture of conformity and psychological control, and many find it challenging to 'let go', and we are not given visions of sexual liberation as tools for deeper personal growth and fulfillment as a whole being. And because for most, sex is bankrupt of ecstatic union, and for many sexual energy has served to sever us from ourselves because of so much wounding around our sexuality.Many view sex in a dualistic manner, seeing man as eternally craving his unquenchable sexual thirst, seeing women as bound by social conventions, restricted in her body unable to fully enjoy her body and disinterested. This has created the rampant cultural image of women as providers for men's sexual energy, through the objectification of women as sexual images or sexual slaves, and has created women as providers for men's sexual fulfillment through marriage ~ creating assumptions that we are only meant to explore sexuality within the confines of our partners. And yet for many in marriages, this confinement of sexual energy with only one person has created deep imbalances and emotional and psychic schisms in a vast majority of relationships, feeling that one is not allowed to 'get ones needs met' when one has lost the sexual connection with ones partner, which is culturally prevalent in modern America.And yet, for every single person alive on this planet, the subconscious is always drawn by the lure of the ultimate sexual experience. It is a peak experience for most, verging on mystically sublime, when two people find that perfect chemistry and merge in hours and days of an exotic serpentine dance of bodies writhing in ecstatic joy, uninterested in anything else in existence but coitus. And because Americans are so deeply sexually repressed and so needy for a higher, bigger, better, faster, more amazing 'fix' for themselves, the lure of sex is a common magnet. And we as a culture are finally being presented with a more promising vision of sexuality, a compassionate, accepting perspective of sexuality that gives us permission to explore some of the most central themes of being alive; love, our bodies, our psyches, and what it means to be fully alive and fully present & vulnerable with another.However, for many the full ecstatic union potential of sexuality is often lost with many people who feel lost, struggling with 'mechanical' sexuality. Sexual experiences are meant to draw people together and be a sacred space of love, worshipping the exquisite divine beauty within each other, and yet for many we are drawn apart and feel disconnected and a lack of enjoyment or love is the result. For most, sexually intimate experiences lack true intimacy; that necessary element of deep connection and full presence with each other. So often, we disappear into a myriad of mental escape routes; memories, sexual frustration, pornographic visions and fantasies, thinking about chores. And so often, sexual experiences often feel more like two people masturbating together, trying desperately to release their own sexual energy ~ trying to get each other off, trying to please 'the other', rather than coming together and merging their energies to create a prolonged heightened state. It's a common scenario played out on screen and in bedrooms, where men masturbate themselves using a woman's body until they've reached their point of release and then everything is over. This is not a vision of union.It has been said that in sex, women are like water and men are the flame. In order to get the women's water to the boiling point, the man must keep the heat on the water long enough to allow the water to boil, and once at the boiling point, the energy is unstoppable. This is the crucial juncture in the sexual realm where elements of self-cultivation, beginning with meditation and mindfulness come into play. If we do not learn how to master our sexual energy, then we will forever be slaves to our sexual energy ~ consistently yanked around by a carrot of desire; childlike, out of control, distracted, and projecting our needs on those around us. And self-mastery always begins with awareness, the crucial crucible of the Buddhist philosophical bedrock. Self-cultivation does not necessitate self-reppression, as in the Christian model, but cultivating awareness of how to move ones energy with skillful means.Sexual awareness begins with the awareness of subtle body awareness. QiGong is one of the best teachers for subtle body awareness, learning how to practice awareness of, and feeling the flow of, Qi ~ or the Life Force Energy ~ within our body. For those who are new to cultivating an inner awareness, the process begins with bringing ones attention within oneself, rather than projecting your awareness outside of yourself. Begin with the breath, and move from there towards the fullness of your body sensations and your experience of the internal energy. Follow the natural, spontaneous movements of your body, as attuning yourself to your body's intelligence will be the best teacher for you to become Tantric. The more attuned you are to the inner awareness of your body, the more you will notice currents of energy moving through you, through your hands, through your arms, and through your torso. Becoming more present and attuned to your whole being, including your mind body and spiritual energy system, brings you into a state of being more psychic and energetically attuned to the energies around you. When you learn how to become more saturated in a state of body-mind-spirit wholeness, you can bring that inner cultivation to your relationship with your partner, and be more psychically and energetically connected to your partner at all times, including through sexual connection.Sexual connection creates psychic bonding, through the opening of our life force energy into the cellular & energetic body of our partner. We brings our hearts and awareness into attunement to those we are in co-creation with. If we are in a relationship where there is no real heart based or body based connection, we will be frustrated if we engage sexually because the energy of loving presence and union will not be possible. But when we learn how to be fully present, conscious of our full body's sensations, our breath, and stay fully present with our partner in a space of loving open vulnerability, we can become aware of the energy moving between us. Our experience becomes a passionate dance of total spontaneity, where we melt into the sensuous bliss moving our beings effortlessly. We cannot force this experience to happen; our desire may get in the way of the actualization of this potential.In our culture where we always grasp for what we want and believe that attaining what we want is power, we try to force experiences to happen, rather than allow them to happen. This attitude too often is brought into intimacy and sex becomes a goal oriented game of trying to force an experience to happen. It is best to simply be with what is, and surrender to the spontaneity of the flow of energy, and allow whatever energy that exists to come forth. If sadness and frustration come forth, allow it. If there is no juice or the man loses his energy before total ecstasy erupts, allow it. If hours of unending ecstasy emerges in mind-altering oblivion and you find yourself totally harmonized with yourself and your partner, allow it. Trying to force our partner to have a specific goal oriented experience, ie that of attaining an orgasm, creates a situation where either person is trying to masturbate the other person, and thus both become disconnected from each other in the process. Instead, release any need for any ultimate outcome, and focus on being sensitive to the body-based information you receive through yourself and the body sensations you feel pulsing through the other, and try to melt fully into that feeling.Be absorbed in the sensual experience, and release all plans. The longer you stay in that state, the longer you are able to stay in that state and remain unendingly absorbed, continually building and building the intensity and ecstasy within that bubble. In doing so, orgasmic potential becomes trivial and effortless. The woman's yoni becomes a fiery oven of heat; an inexhaustible flame. The man's lingam becomes the embodiment of what the word lingam means; the rod of light, and through that spear one is able to channel our heart's love and masculine virile power. And the two merge into one without any effort.We have the potential to be annihilated into the infinite, and to experience ultimate states of transcendance within sexuality. And this potential exists because everyone subconsciously desires transcendance, mind blowing ecstasy, and feeling completely safe, loved, held and fully met. And also because we are all divinely inspired creations of the divine essence seeking a way to remember and re-experience the fullness of this ecstatic consciousness. Ecstatic sexuality is just one doorway to the divine. The potential seed may remain latent and unactualized for a long time, until one realizes that this is a doorway to becoming more whole and happy ~ and thus decides to pursue self-cultivation with dedication. Our legendary sexual experiences remain with us as sacred memories for a lifetime; that state of bliss is like a feeling of coming home into an effortlessly expanded state of power. As one couple I met with expressed to me, their most treasured sexual experience with each other was potent mostly because they felt so intimately connected with each other, because they had released all their distractions and work, having spent a week on the beach, disconnected from their global communications devices and totally focused on being with each other.For myself, peak sexual experiences put me in touch with the energies of the divine feminine, feeling completely integrated with the cosmic knowledge of goddess wisdom, channelling that energy into every cell of my body. Peak sexual experiences bring me to being present and fully alive; vibrating with intense ecstasy from my yoni throughout my entire body in a state of power, feeling that vibrancy coursing through every nano-fiber of my energy body. I become an embodiment of love, openness, psychic awareness and full knowing of who I am. I become cracked open, and receive intuitive downloads of information coming straight from a blissful light-filled dreamtime consciousness. There is no longer any disconnect between my higher divine self and 'me' ~ within that state I feel completely whole and totally integrated in my power.It is so crucial that we regard our sexual energy with reverence towards its sacredness because it has such amazing potential to open us up so beautifully, and likewise the potential to damage us and create so much fear, emotional scarring and separation. When we realize that we are divinely created beings awakening to our full authentic selves, and we let go of those blockages that keep us separated in fear from our fullness, we will experience the ultimate release into the knowing of who we truly are.